1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to print management in print-on-demand (POD) jobs, and in particular, it relates to utilizing barcodes or any machine-readable pattern in print management in POD jobs.
2. Description of Related Art
Many POD jobs involve reprinting or copying of a document that has been printed before in hard copies on a recording medium, often referred to as “print”. In this sense, a print is a hard copy print out of a digital document on a recording medium, such as paper. Reprinting of a print generally means to print the digital document again on a recording medium by, for example, a printer device. Copying of a print, on the other hand, generally means to scan the print and print the scanned image on a recording medium by, for example, a copier device. Printer and copier devices are often referred to as image reproduction devices. Sometimes an image reproduction device may be an “all-in-one” device that combines the functions of a printer, a scanner, a copier and/or a facsimile machine.
Due to concerns of document reproduction rights such as copyrights, various approaches have been developed to control the printing of digital documents and also the reproduction, e.g., reprinting or copying, of printed documents (or prints). One of the approaches is to utilize barcodes that are printed on the prints.
Barcode is a form of machine-readable symbology for encoding data, and has been widely introduced in a variety of application fields. Two-dimensional barcode (2D barcode) is one mode of such symbology. It can be used to encode text, numbers, images, and binary data streams in general, and has been used in identification of documents, etc. Examples of widely used 2D barcode standards include PDF417 standard and Quick Response Code or QR Code®, and software and hardware products have been available to print and read such 2D barcodes.
As mentioned above, original digital documents, which may include text, graphics, images, etc., are often printed in prints, and the printed hard copy or prints are distributed, copied, etc., and then often scanned back into digital form. This is referred to as a “closed-loop” process. Alternatively, an original digital document that has been printed in prints in certain quantity at an earlier time may need to be reprinted for another certain quantity at a later time. There is often a need to authenticate a print and verify the authorization for reprint.
Various methods have been proposed to authenticate a print using 2D barcode. Specifically, the method includes encoding the content of the document in a 2D barcode (i.e., the “authentication barcode”), and printing the barcode on the same recording medium as the printed document. The content of the document may be a bitmap image of a page of the document, text, graphics or images contained within the document, or a mixture thereof. To authenticate a print bearing an authentication barcode, the print can be scanned to obtain scanned data that represents the content of the document, e.g. a bitmap image, text extracted by using an optical character recognition (OCR) technology, etc. The authentication barcode is also scanned and the data contained therein (i.e., the authentication data) is extracted. The scanned data of the print is then compared to the authentication data to determine whether the document is authentic. A printed document bearing authentication barcode is said to be self-authenticating because no information other than what is on the printed document is required to authenticate its content. In self-authentication cases, print management may only be used in a very limited manner, i.e., to allow or not to allow printing, because the number of reprints cannot be controlled.
It is desirable to provide a method that utilizes 2D barcodes to assist the authentication and verification of the rights of reprinting or copying prints in POD jobs in an effective and efficient manner.